of the boarding house, speaking from a purely physical and objective point of view.  What this air was actually composed of was perhaps beyond the possibility of determination, but that it took away sensitive Effi’s breath was only too certain, and she saw herself compelled for this external reason to go out in search of other rooms, which she found comparatively near by, in the above-described apartment on Koeniggraetz St. She was to move in at the beginning of the autumn quarter, had made the necessary purchases, and during the last days of September counted the hours till her liberation from the boarding house.  On one of these last days, a quarter of an hour after she had retired from the dining room, planning to enjoy a rest on a sea grass sofa covered with some large-figured woolen material, there was a gentle rap at her door.

“Come in!”

One of the housemaids, a sickly looking person in the middle thirties, who by virtue of always being in the hall of the boarding house carried the atmosphere stored there with her everywhere, in her wrinkles, entered the room and said:  “I beg your pardon, gracious Lady, but somebody wishes to speak to you.”

“Who?”

“A woman.”

“Did she tell you her name?”

“Yes.  Roswitha.”

Before Effi had hardly heard this name she shook off her drowsiness, sprang up, ran out into the corridor, grasped Roswitha by both hands and drew her into her room.

“Roswitha!  You!  Oh, what joy!  What do you bring?  Something good, of course.  Such a good old face can bring only good things.  Oh, how happy I am!  I could give a kiss.  I should not have thought such joy could ever come to me again.  You good old soul, how are you anyhow?  Do you still remember how the ghost of the Chinaman used to stalk about?  Those were happy times.  I thought then they were unhappy, because I did not yet know the hardness of life.  Since then I have come to know it.  Oh, there are far worse things than ghosts.  Come, my good Roswitha, come, sit down by me and tell me—­Oh, I have such a longing.  How is Annie?”

Roswitha was unable to speak, and so she let her eyes wander around the strange room, whose gray and dusty-looking walls were bordered with narrow gilt molding.  Finally she found herself and said that his Lordship was back from Glatz.  That the old Emperor had said, “six weeks were quite sufficient (imprisonment) in such a case,” and she had only waited for his Lordship’s return, on Annie’s account, who had to have some supervision.  Johanna was no doubt a proper person, but she was still too pretty and too much occupied with herself, and God only knows what all she was thinking about.  But now that his Lordship could again keep an eye on Annie and see that everything was right, she herself wanted to try to find out how her Ladyship was getting on.

“That is right, Roswitha.”

“And I wanted to see whether your Ladyship lacked anything, and whether you might need me.  If so I would stay right here and pitch in and do everything and see to it that your Ladyship was getting on well again.”